Artists of the world we need you!

I was in the modern art museum in Tbilisi, Georgia checking out the work of expressionist artist, Zurab Tsereteli. His is famous for his sculptures and quite a master at his craft. The exhibit also featured some of his paintings. The expressionist portraiture was of human figures in grotesque form. As an example, the hands and feet were often exaggerated, being disproportionately large. Apparently expressionism would work in this form to draw attention to the emotional reality that lay beyond the physical realm. It had its history in the early 20th century, beginning in Germany and moving throughout Europe.

While at this museum I stumbled upon a statement made by Herman Bahr, an Austrian literary and art critic. This observation was from 1916, when Europe was in the great period of upheaval known as World War One. This was a time when the world turned upside down, with death on a scale I still find hard to imagine. Everything changed.

Bahr's statement below made me ponder how often societies felt this turmoil bubble to the surface, then explode like a furious volcano. For it was only 20 years later when another tumultuous time hit the world with a similarly forceful impact.

We no longer live the way we once did. We no longer have freedom, we no longer get to decide anything, we’ve been stripped of our soul, nature itself has been left with a human in it(....) There hasn’t been a single period in human history that would have been ravished by so much despair, horror and death (...) And now we have this wall of despair where a human being screams at the top of his voice to get to his soul, this desperate wail is all that can be heard in our time. Even art is yelling its head off in the dark, begging for help, trying to summon a soul from the void: that is the expressionism...It’s the expressionist who opens our mouth for us: for far too long we’ve just been listening in silence, now he wants our soul to respond to us.

Herman Bahr, 1916 

How do we feel in these times, in our period of history? I know a lot of us feel fear at what the "free world" has become: a collusion of self-centered ideologies, biased media, idiotic political figures, and a war industry pushing us towards a precipice. In this time we need to hear the brave voices of artists, yelling out from the rooftops. We so desperately need to be "summoned from the void." Artists of the world, unite, we need you to stir in us the waters of the soul so that we too can be transformed and see the world with new eyes.

Zurab Tsereteli's tear drop monument in New York (Russian gift to US to commemorate 9/11). Photo courtesy of google images.